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Revolver Films and the dark side of distribution

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A friend of mine sent me a link of an article stating that Revolver went down the toilet. He also went on to say that it was a good thing they were out of business as they were fleecing people but let’s face it; the distribution industry is full of rip off merchants and badly paying sharks. For those that are old enough to remember there was Palace Pictures run (badly!) by Nik Powell and Stephen Woolley which released seminal classics like Evil Dead, the early John Woo films and a host of others who went under leaving a lot of people out of pocket. Ironically the biggest hit in their history, The Crying Game, was released after their bankruptcy by Miramax who sold it cleverly on the ‘willy surprise’. This windfall would have saved Palace but only for the short term, as they were really bad when it came to bookkeeping and would only have postponed their inevitable death. Miramax themselves (prior to selling out to Disney) were another distributer notable for its financial banditry but champions of films that would otherwise never reach a wide audience.

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Quality parts for Black and Asian talent

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But not on a television near you…..

I am working on an extremely good short film where the talent consists of four Black and Asian actors and the sterling work on display will be travelling the short film circuit and more pretty soon.

Everyone knows that these short films are a showcase to get better work but in some cases the diverse talent have a great calling card for parts that don’t exist in mainstream television. Why? Simply because the commissioners aren’t pushing through material that is relevant to modern Britain.

I will plainly say that there is racial bias in television at the moment and even though this is being addressed constantly by the powers that be, nothing is really being done about it to level the landscape.

When will the talent that is showcased in in these finely crafted shorts translate to television where they belong To be seen by a proper mainstream audience? When will writing that is worthy of their talents be pushed into production?

Again, I have addressed American television in being broad in diverse talent and much to my chagrin black and asian talent is migrating there to get good parts.

Change will happen but not in mainstream media but in the digital realm but before then stop the talent drain.

My Beautiful Laundrette 2

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A possible sequel to the seminal channel 4 film seen from a different light with puppetry as the best medium to capture a post Thatcher country.

General Levy is making a comeback

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Everyone knows as a one hit wonder General Levy would be the best person to make a cameo in the famous stage play. This kind of wacky casting  coup can energise the normally staid theatre production and breathe life into the oh-so boring scene.

 

Stuart Baird: the unsung film editor

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Yes, Sam Mendes directed Skyfall and it’s a fantastic addition to the series but one name that deserves better recognition is the editor Stuart Baird and seeing as the Bond producers wanted to make their mark for the 50th anniversary this is the man to make the film as fast paced as possible. Why should you care? You probably didn’t even notice his name in the funky credits.

This is a man who edited Superman, The Omen, and Lethal Weapon among others to great acclaim and later became editorial supervisor for Warner Brothers. He fixed a lot of films that got into trouble in the edit suite due to runaway budgets and egos like MI:2 in which he was directly cutting the workprint because of the impending release date. Now that is rock and roll. He also tried to fix Tomb Raider but one is only mortal!  His directorial endeavours unfortunately don’t rate as highly as his editorial, which is rather strange when you compare the likes of Robert Wise and David Lean who came up through editing and became very good directors, after all this is the launchpad for directing.

Yes he also edited Casino Royale, which was a previous reboot of the franchise (he is a frequent collaborator of Martin Campbell), but as this is the 50th anniversary of the franchise and they were going full throttle in every department I knew this was going to be a brilliantly paced film mainly down to this man.

Credit where credit’s due and often he is marginalised by the bigger names but this is one man who’s work I find entertaining.

 It is worth mentioning that Eric Idle’s character in Burn Hollywood Burn was apparently based on Stuart Baird.

Jimmy Savile test card

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The serial nonce Jimmy Savile gets everywhere with no corner of BBC television safe in his pursuit of the sexual scorched earth policy.

 

 

production company alt: logo

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Deciding on a ridiculously sensationalistic production company name i decided to try out with this sleazy name in the good spirit of the grind-house distributers.

I have yet to incorporate this as legitimate enterprise but the door is open (as it were)

What (little) I learned from the screenwriting books

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I got into screenwriting a few years ago and like anyone who hasn’t done a course I decided to read a few how-to books to get an idea of structure but in all honesty they didn’t really help. There is a some value in reading a couple of them but only to a certain degree and the one thing I really got from all the books that stick in my mind is listed right at the bottom..

The Robert Mckee seminars are probably better as you get the visual performance for educational purposes but the idea that you should read these books or you will end up with a 100-page mess is not necessarily true. I am near the end of the third book, Save the Cat, which everyone talks about after Syd Field’s Screenplay and don’t get me wrong, I have gleaned a few bits of helpful information but the only way I really learned to write is watching films (lots of films!) and reading screenplays (lots of screenplays!). Absorbing that much information gives you an idea on structure.

Oh, and write. Write all the time, rewrite and keep rewriting. You will get your own rhythm and believe me, you will get your own voice. I personally refer to screenplays rather than the how-to books when I get stuck and listening to established screenwriters, they pretty much do the same.

Learning the fundamentals is an important aspect to great screenwriting but take in the script books verbatim and you will invariably have run off the mill scripts that work through the motions. Look at the films you really like and ask yourself if they followed the rules to the letter? No, they learned the fundamentals and then added their own characteristics.

Also to be blunt, if you want to write “within the system” then go ahead and follow these books to the letter and then start counting the money but that’s not me, that’s not the style I am going for. The best how-to book on selling out and generally a really fun read is Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: by Garant and Lennon. This one is explicit for writing purely for money and thereby selling your soul.

Now, stop procrastinating, open that Final Draft and get going

The following is roughly the screenplay breakdown and most movies follow this model:

-page 1-10: we meet the character and the world they live in

-page 10: the incident happens

-page 25: your hero is launched into the story

-page 45-50: things get worse

-page 65-70: something even worse happens

-page 70-80: things get as bad as they can possibly get

-page 80-90: the winning is going to be harder than we thought it was

-page 90-100-ish: the climax, the hero wins

 

Alternative Osama film poster

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With all these hollywood films that rewrite/ distort history (U571 is a prime example!) I have designed a poster for the real Zero Dark Thirty story which involved a British team to take down Osama. starring Ray Winstone as a Hard Bastard ™

Death of Film

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I was chatting to a guy I know and he was worried that with the advent of cheap digital cameras and edit suites, his skills in the professional world would be diminished. How can a filmmaker shine with so much content being made? What brought on all this paranoia?  Well, we separately just watched the doc, Side by Side about the transition of the chemical film process to digital, which has polarized the film community.

My personal view is that it’s a great thing for a number of reasons. I started when you shot on film as “that was the way” and it was bloody expensive to get the film processed and this limited to how much you could shoot. You really needed some heavy cash behind you to afford such luxuries. In terms of editing, I also had the fortune back then to work for a post house that had invested in an Avid (retail: 80 grand!), which was an immense cost saver. Some filmmakers weren’t so lucky.

I still love the look of film and am more than happy that digital is now at a better quality compared to Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Mike Figgis early digital efforts. Even though these filmmakers were pioneers their films still looked like digital video and hence flat and inferior. Now, Red and Arri have both closed the gap and for me the peak so far is the lush quality of Skyfall. It helps that people like Steven Soderbergh and David Fincher try to push the digital limits for quality so the audience benefits.

Starting on film is a great learning curve for me because you were physically have to splice the film (I cut on a Steenbeck!) so you had to really think about the cuts you were going to have to make otherwise you have to unpick the film and start again. Every film editor will also say that when you spool through a 500 foot roll you might catch something that you might use. On an NLE you tap a number and go to that scene. In digital editing you can make as many sequences and edits and to the undisciplined eye you can really get bogged down with too many options and lose sight of the film you envisioned. I have seen it with new editors when going through their bins.

The short film I recently did was a godsend due to a low budget and cheap gear! Also you have to note that just because everyone has access to cheap kit doesn’t mean it’s going to be good and there are some really dreadful shorts out there which also is good as it makes the great projects shine. The elitism of filmmaking is eroding and people like Shane Meadows get a chance to have a voice. Hell, even those from Black and Asian backgrounds can now create content which used to be the exclusivity of the middle class.

Take a look at this clip from Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse made in 1991. Francis Coppola had the same vision right there, one that I wholeheartedly share.

I thoroughly recommend watching Side by Side to see how much of a revolution is taking place

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